CHAPTER XVII

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*MRS. SMITHERS DOES ACCOUNTS*

As she would have been the first to admit, arithmetic was not one of Mrs. Smithers's intellectual strongholds. Figures baulked her. They were an inexhaustible enemy which, when aroused, flung themselves upon her in serried legions and battalions, eluded pursuit, barricaded themselves behind mysterious lines, multiplied themselves into preposterous quantities, and utterly refused to "come out" and surrender to Mrs. Smithers's somewhat individual laws of subtraction and addition.

On this particular afternoon, she had determined on a grand assault, and had armed herself with a large sheet of paper, a pencil sharpened to a nicety, removed her mittens, straightened her wig, and figuratively rolled up her sleeves. Having made these preparations, which were probably intended more as a demonstration of impending "frightfulness" than as an actual assistance in her task, she took up her position in the dak-bungalow dining-room and opened fire.

She had fought unflinchingly for an hour, when the curtains at the far end of the room were pushed aside with an impatience which Mrs. Smithers seemed to recognize. Before she even looked up, she turned the sheet of paper, with its pattern of astonishing hieroglyphics on its face, and set her mittens upon it with an air of fixing a tombstone over the body of her enemy.

"Why, lawks a-mercy, Sigrid, I thought you were sleeping!" she exclaimed.

"The punkah-coolie had a nap instead. It was so hot--oh, Smithy, what an annoying person you can be! I've been hunting for you for the last hour."

"In which case," Mrs. Smithers commented, with a judicial flavour of speech culled from the law reports, "you must have looked under all the chairs and tables. I can't see how anybody could hunt for anything in this nasty barn of a place without running into them in ten minutes. Not a decent door, not a corner where you can get a moment to yourself--let alone escape from those crawling black things----"

Sigrid Fersen sighed. She had been standing in the doorway, one slender arm, from which the sleeve of her pale green tea-gown had dropped back, raised to hold aside the curtain. Now she came forward, moving restlessly and noiselessly about the room, picking up one ornament after another and putting it down without apparently having looked at it.

"You never will let me wipe my boots on you, Smithy," she complained. "I've trained you to be a doormat ever since I was an infant in arms, and you still show not the slightest aptitude. One of these days, I shall lose patience and send you flying." She caught the line of contempt at the corner of Mrs. Smithers's prim mouth and came over and pinched her ear with real severity. "I saw that sneer, you horrid, disreputable old tyrant! You think I can't get on without you. I wish I could, just to spite you----"

She stopped short, as though losing interest in her train of thought, and stood at Mrs. Smithers's side stroking the latter's withered cheek with a light, absent-minded hand. Mrs. Smithers accepted the attention much as a cat would have done, without gush or undignified gratitude, but with sedate I-fully-deserve-it satisfaction. "Smithy, do you realize that we shall have to pack up soon?"

"And a very good thing, too. A nice sight you're getting to look in this oven of a place."

"Am I? I thought so myself this afternoon. It quite frightened me. Smithy, make an effort and tell the truth. Am I showing signs of--of wear and tear?"

Mrs. Smithers unbent. She took the hand on her shoulder and kissed it abruptly and shamefacedly.

"Steel doesn't rust, Sigrid."

"Doesn't it? That shows what you know about steel. Also it proves you've been reading penny novelettes again. Still, there is such a thing as poetic licence, and as a compliment it will pass. No, I shan't rust, Smithy--I'd rather snap like the good blade of your metaphor----" She drifted along the currents of her thoughts for a moment, and then added abruptly, "So it's hey for England and the end of things."

"The beginning, my dear."

"I don't know. We're almost at the end of our tether."

"Well, you knew that would happen."

"Yes--I suppose I did. I remember making admirable, lucid plans to meet the event. Nothing particular has happened to upset them."

"Nothing at all, my dear."

"By the way, the Rajah has asked me to marry him."

Mrs. Smithers laughed. Her amusement was usually of a more restrained kind, and the laugh had a rusty, disused sound.

"That's a good joke."

"Isn't it? I don't think he would have offered me anything so respectable if he had had more pluck. He's terrified of me and of Gaya. He imagines Gaya would make him impossible if he insulted me. I've outgrown his original intentions altogether."

"What did you say?"

"I told him he wasn't rich enough. It was horribly vulgar, but it's the sort of thing he understands. I've never seen a man more humiliated. If I had told him he was a blackguard, he wouldn't have minded. It's wonderful how he has assimilated our Western ideals."

"Sigrid----"

"Yes, I know--I'm in a detestable mood. I'm upset, Smithy. I've always controlled my life, moulded it into the shape I wanted. I was so sure that I could never be beaten by it. I thought there was only one real catastrophe we human beings were afflicted with--ill-health--and that I was prepared to master in my own way. But now----"

Mrs. Smithers picked up her pencil and tapped the table with a judicial air of summing up.

"You're out of sorts, Sigrid. Look at things straight. Two years ago we started off on a wild-goose chase. I knew it was a wild-goose chase, but you had to be humoured and so I just let you run. Besides, you had a grain of horse-sense in you. If you couldn't find what you wanted in those two years, you'd take the next best thing. Well, you haven't found it----"

"How do you know? What about the Rajah?"

"Sigrid--your mind wants a good spring-cleaning. It's full of cobwebs and horrors----"

"Or Major Tristram?"

Mrs. Smithers seized upon her mittens and folded them up into a tight ball and smacked them viciously down on the table.

"Of course, you're in love with him, the poor benighted, footling ninny. That's the whole trouble."

"And you're dying for me to marry him. That's why you're always insulting him."

She moved away from Mrs. Smithers's side and stood at the open window looking out on to the garden, her hand to her cheek in her favourite attitude of meditation. "Yes, I am in love with him in a superficial sort of way. It's his absurdity, his unreality, his utterly impossible conception of life. And his love of me. Just as absurd as the rest of him. A fantasia. Two years' worship of a woman he saw dancing for ten minutes before a vulgar, gaping, unseeing mob! Think of it. It's sheer worship, Smithy. He sees something miraculous--divine in me. That's the wonderful part of him. He's right. He's gone right through me to what is divine--my art. He saw me dance--he was just a country-bumpkin who didn't know Beethoven from Bizet--and he didn't worry about my beauty or the shape of my limbs, or wonder whether my pearls were real or who gave them to me. He saw God in me. I knew that when I found my photograph on his table. In a kind of flash. It wasn't a silly, stage-door infatuation. It was real--a perfect understanding." She threw out her arms with a gesture of freedom, of spiritual expansion. "Oh, it tasted good, that understanding. I couldn't have done less than love him." She seemed to sink into a deep, brooding contentment, and Mrs. Smithers did not move or speak. "But I shan't marry him. I am not young any longer. I have built my house and have lived in it too long. I need space and splendour, magnificence. I should stifle in his hovel. I am no sensualist. I belong to the best of the old Greeks. No vulgar display of wealth, no ugliness of poverty--but absolute Beauty--that's my religion--the most austere religion of the world. He understands, but he cannot follow. He doesn't know it, but he has chosen the road of the Galilean--not the Galilean of the Cross, but the simple man who loved the sparrows and the lilies--and I follow Diana and Apollo----" She broke off with a sigh and turned away. "So that's the end of that. We shall pack our trunks, and one day it will be just an episode. But today--don't let any one worry me today, Smithy. There's some one coming up the drive now. Tell them I'm ill--anything--only don't let them worry me----"

She touched the old cheek with her lips, and then soundlessly, like a flash of pale light, had vanished.

Mrs. Smithers unfolded her mittens and put them on. Apparently unmoved, she was about to resume her offensive against her enemy, when Mary Compton made her appearance on the balcony. Whereupon Mrs. Smithers postponed her attack in order to settle first with the intruder. Her manner, however, was almost gracious. She liked Mrs. Compton. She liked her especially this afternoon because she was wearing one of Sigrid's frocks--by no means an old one--which Mrs. Smithers had altered with her own hands. This detail formed an unbreakable link of affection and fraternity.

Mrs. Compton did not wait for an invitation. She dropped into the nearest chair, discarded her garden hat, and flung her parasol on the floor, proceeding thereafter to ruffle her grey-threaded curly hair with an exasperated hand.

"Oh, the heat! Smithy, for pity's sake, don't tell me I've faced it for nothing. Sigrid's in?"

"She's in, Mrs. Compton, but she's not at home."

"Not even for me?"

"Not for a living soul."

"She's--she's not ill?"

"Not that I know of." She shot a glance at Mrs. Compton's crestfallen countenance, and relaxed her official attitude. "You can have a cup of tea if you like."

Mrs. Compton laughed.

"Well, it's a poor substitute, but I'll take it. I should expire on your doorstep if you didn't give me something to revive me. I met that brute of a Barclay on the road and he offered me a lift. The mere thought of it will keep me on the frazzle for days. I only hope he isn't coming here."

"He'd better not," Mrs. Smithers observed, with grim significance. There was a moment's silence, and then she jerked her head in the direction of the curtained doorway. "It's the heat," she explained. "It's just wearing her to ribbons. The Lord be praised, we shall be going back to civilization soon."

Mrs. Compton sat bolt upright, red with consternation.

"She's not going back to England?"

"I hope so, I'm sure."

"It's--it's an engagement, I suppose?"

"H'm, a sort of one."

"Smithy--and it's just as though she only arrived yesterday. What shall I do? Everything will be nothing without her. What did she come for? Just to make us all hate each other, just to show us what a silly, colourless world we live in? Smithy, this means a divorce for me. I shall desert Archie. I shall live at stage-doors and spend my fortune on front seats in the pit. I shall see her dance at last----"

The very poignant feeling which underlay her desperate humour touched Mrs. Smithers to the quick. At all times she was inclined to treat facetiousness seriously, most of life's jokes having been made at her expense, and she saw more of Mary Compton's grief than the latter knew.

"My dear, don't you do nothing silly. You wouldn't see her dance."

"In London."

"No."

"In Paris, then----"

"Not in Paris--nowhere."

"But, Smithy----"

"If she did, she'd----" Mrs. Smithers took her tongue between her teeth. She leant across the table, her stiff old body quivering with menace. "Don't you breathe a word--don't you let on--if you do, I'll--I'll----"

What Mrs. Smithers would or would not have done Mrs. Compton never knew. In a state of uncomprehending consternation, she almost welcomed the diversion created by the entry of a frightened-looking servant.

"Mem-Sahib--if you please, Mem-Sahib----"

His announcement was also lost. He was pushed roughly aside and James Barclay entered. At sight of his tall, perfectly clad figure Mrs. Smithers was on her feet, and for a moment Mrs. Compton believed she intended a personal assault--a belief which Barclay himself appeared to share, for his attitude became more deferential though not less resolute. He bowed gravely to his opponent, including Mrs. Compton in the greeting. Mrs. Compton ignored him.

"I am sorry to be forced to intrude in this way," he began with a certain dignity. "It seems to be fated that I should have to burgle my entry. But I was practically certain that an ordinary appeal for admission would be ignored. So I just followed on your butler's heels. May I speak to Miss Fersen?"

Mrs. Smithers drew a deep breath of indignation.

"No, you may not. She's not seeing any one--much less you--you blackguard----"

Mrs. Compton jumped at the sheer vigour and audacity of the attack, and then, as she saw Barclay's face, was conscious of a pang of the half-angry pity which he had caused her once before. A peculiar pallor showed under his olive skin. He was no longer smiling, and his eyes had a sick, stricken look like that of an animal badly hurt. The next minute he was himself again, cool, resolute, without that insolence which stamped most of his actions as weak and fundamentally diffident.

"I am sorry you think of me like that, Mrs. Smithers, but I won't argue about it. I must see Miss Fersen----"

"Do you want me to throw you out with my own hands?"

"No, I don't," he returned, with perfect gravity. "All I ask of you is to give Miss Fersen this letter. It was written in case she refused to see me. It is a business matter."

Mrs. Smithers wavered, obviously nonplussed by the man's quiet resolution. In despair, she appealed to Mrs. Compton.

"What shall I do with him?"

Mrs. Compton stared out into the garden.

"You'd better take the letter, hadn't you? It gives Sigrid a chance to decide for herself."

"Oh, very well." She snatched the letter from Barclay's hands and made her exit with what sounded like the challenging snort of an old war-horse. Barclay maintained his position quietly. He made no effort to speak to Mrs. Compton, who continued to ignore him. But, without knowing it, his restraint began to trouble her, and she resorted to the mannerism of stage heroes when confronted by the villain and a painful situation. She opened a silver case on the table beside her, selected a cigarette, and began to smoke with an insulting satisfaction. Had Barclay offered her the lighter which she was certain he possessed, she felt that she would have infallibly struck him; but he stood stroking his moustache, and apparently as unconscious of her as she pretended to be of him. The silence became intolerable. Furiously conscious that he had beaten her on her own ground, she got up and went out on to the balcony, only to realize with increased annoyance that she had been beaten by a second. Mrs. Smithers had returned. She did not look at Barclay, and addressed her message to the opposite wall.

"You can go in," she said.

He bowed, showing no sign of elation or surprise, and the door closed behind him. Mary Compton returned, and the two women busied themselves with the tea-things which had been brought in, paying the function more intent interest than was usual. They were both nervous. For all Mrs. Smithers's excessive clatter, they could hear voices, muffled and continuous, and something in the sound paralysed their initiative. Neither wished to listen, but they found nothing with which to cover their compulsory attention. When Mrs. Smithers spoke at last it was with a breathless tremulousness.

"I don't know what Sigrid did it for," she said. "She didn't want to see any one, and now this creature comes along. Just because he met her once at some reception he'd managed to wriggle himself into--she can be so idiotically good-natured--it was a begging letter, I'm sure: the nasty, cadging blackamoor."

Mrs. Compton did not respond directly. She had what, for all men say, is a quality equally rare in both sexes, a profound reverence for the reticences and secrets of her friends, and she wished to avoid the confidences which might be hovering on Mrs. Smithers's unsteady lips.

"I hate meeting that man," she said, by way of an answer. "He frightens me. I always think of him as an English sin come home to roost--a bird of ill-omen, not necessarily bad, just foredoomed to evil. I wish he hadn't come to Gaya."

"I wish he'd leave Sigrid alone," Mrs. Smithers muttered.

Mary Compton knew now that Barclay had been at the dak-bungalow before, and wished she did not know. The knowledge troubled her, increasing an inexplicable uneasiness. Something was going on in that next room. Though she could not and would not have heard the words, the voices persisted in attaining her consciousness. Their tone was neither angry nor excited, but intensely earnest. Business? What business could James Barclay have with a woman he scarcely knew? She could not avoid the question. Then came a silence infinitely worse than the voices--it was so sudden and prolonged.

Mary Compton became almost panic-stricken in her effort to escape from the fascination of that silence. She turned her attention to Mrs. Smithers, who had deserted her tea and gone back to her figures.

"Are you drawing patterns?" she asked hurriedly. Mrs. Smithers shook her head.

"Sums," she explained. "Never could do them even in me board-school days, and that's some time ago. Are you any good?"

"I wrestle with accounts once a week--not successfully. But that's not the fault of my arithmetic. It's Archie's pay. Can I help?"

Mrs. Smithers sat back and folded her hands.

"What I'm trying to find out," she began, "is, what income would one have if one had two thousand pounds?"

"It depends on the rate of interest."

"What rate of interest can one have?"

"Well, three-and-a-half per cent. if you're rich, and five per cent. if you're poor. If one hasn't much, it's a case of sink or swim."

"Let's split the difference--say, four per cent. Here--you can have the pencil----"

Mrs. Compton laughed.

"I can manage that in my head. Eighty pounds would be about your income."

"Lawks a-mercy!" said Mrs. Smithers under her breath. She brooded over this information for a minute, in which her companion became aware that Sigrid was speaking again--very quietly. If she had spoken angrily Mary Compton would not have felt her heart beating against her ribs in an absurd, horrible excitement. "It's amazing what a little a lot of money is," Mrs. Smithers philosophized gloomily. "I've done a powerful lot of saving, and two thousand pounds seems a powerful lot to have saved, but what's eighty pounds a year? A mere drop in an ocean. One couldn't keep oneself in boots and shoes with it."

Mrs. Compton stared. Mrs. Smithers's elastic-sided foot-gear did not suggest eighty pounds' expenditure, or anything like it.

"No--I suppose not," she ventured.

"And two thousand pounds, for that matter," Mrs. Smithers continued, with increased contempt. "What's the good of that? One couldn't live decently for six months on it."

"I could," Mrs. Compton assured her with a smouldering twinkle in her bright eyes; "but, of course, I'm different. I say, Smithy, are you going on the bust--painting Gaya red and that sort of thing? Do include me in the invitation if you are. I'd just love to do something outrageous." But Mrs. Smithers remained coldly unresponsive, and she got up with a sigh of discomfort. "Well, I'm off. I can't stand that man's voice, and I don't want to see him again. Tell Sigrid I've been, and implore her to come round to dinner. Archie and I are bored stiff with each other." She paused on the edge of the verandah, driving the point of her parasol in between the flags and becoming violently slangy. "I say, Smithy dear, you know I look upon you as a sort of guardian angel to Sigrid. I just wanted to say--if there's anything wrong--any one who's in need of a kicking or--or anything of that kind--or, in fact, if Sigrid wants a body-guard physically or otherwise--just drop us the wink. Archie and I are on."

She was blushing hotly. Mrs. Smithers cleared her throat.

"I shall certainly drop you the wink," she said, in her best manner.

Mrs. Compton nodded, opened her parasol, and set out to face the stretch of hot road back to her own bungalow.

Ten minutes later the door between the two rooms opened. Mrs. Smithers did not so much as look at Barclay, her only intimation that she recognized his passing being a sudden stiffening of her long back. Barclay bowed to her, still very calm and unchallenging, and went out.

Mrs. Smithers waited until she heard the crunch of wheels fade along the drive, and then sailed indignantly into the next room. She was trembling a little and desperately anxious to appear merely angry.

"I can't think how you did it, Sigrid. There was Mrs. Compton wanting to see you, and instead you talked and talked to that nasty half-caste. I was ashamed--I was really--"

She stopped, at the end of artificial fury, but still trembling. Sigrid stood by her writing-table. A long beam of evening sunshine rested lightly and lovingly on her. In her delicate shaded gown, her slender body tensely still and living, she looked like a huge butterfly, wings half-spread, poised for flight. Her head was bent a little, and she still held Barclay's letter in her hands.

"I'm sorry, Smithy. It was important. It seems there's a kind of matrimonial epidemic in Gaya. He has asked me to marry him."

Mrs. Smithers burst into loud and uncontrolled laughter.

"I shouldn't have thought it would have taken you all that time to give him his answer--the creature----"

"I didn't give him an answer. I didn't know--I've got to think things over."

"Sigrid----"

It grew very still. Mrs. Smithers's withered hands fluttered up to her breast and rested there in a helpless weakness. Sigrid began to tear the letter across and across.

"Why are you so upset, Smithy? After all, it's just what we planned--just what you wanted. He's rich--very rich. He was explaining to me how rich. And I need money--a great deal of it--to live and die beautifully----"

"Sigrid!" The cry snapped the palsy which had laid itself on Mrs. Smithers's tongue. She came out of her weakness strong and fierce and outraged. It did not matter that her "h's" flew to the winds. There was nothing comic in her as she stood there, stemming the disaster with her utter disbelief. "You can't mean it--it would be a wicked, wicked thing. It would be a crime--a dirty crime--you'd be selling yourself--yes, I shall say it, Sigrid. I've stood by you through thick and thin, I 'ave; I've been like a dog that's never questioned, never thought if what you did was right or wrong--I've licked your hand through everything--but you'd be no better than--than a woman on the streets----"

"Be silent!"

"I won't. This isn't what we planned. It's different. I'll fight you, Sigrid. I'll fight you every inch. I've got my share in you--I won't 'ave it spoiled and moiled. I won't." She paused an instant, drawing her breath deep and strong. "I'd kill 'im first," she said, between her teeth.

Sigrid half turned. Her face looked small and white, as though something withering had passed over it. The wry, unsteady smile at the corners of her blue-shadowed lips was like light on something dead.

"Not if I didn't wish it, Smithy. I daresay I shan't do it--I don't know yet; but, in any case, you can't get away--you'll lick my hand, as you call it, to the very end."

They eyed each other like enemies, battling will against will. The old woman wavered piteously.

"Sigrid, my dear--'ave pity--just because it's true--because I can't fight you--because I belong to you--'ave pity on yourself. Don't do it, my dear, don't do it, Sigrid. I've got a bit of money saved. You can 'ave it--every penny of it. I don't want it. It's your money--what you've given me. An old woman like me doesn't want much. Take it, Sigrid; it'll keep you for a bit, until--until----"

"It won't do, Smithy--I want money--a great deal of money. It costs so much to live magnificently--" She spoke with great slowness and deliberation. Suddenly she turned. There was a kind of panic in her eyes. "Life's not got to be too strong for me--I've got to go on as I will--stick to me!"

A wave of delicate, youthful colour swept up into Mrs. Smithers's cheeks. Her whole life, lived selflessly, loyally, in another's splendour culminated in this moment--in this appeal. She held out her arms, holding the half-yielding half-defiant figure in an embrace which challenged heaven and earth.

"As though I shouldn't" she muttered fiercely. "My dear, as though I shouldn't----"

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